To Albert S. Samuels...

It was a diamond all right, shining in the grass half a dozen feet from the blue brick walk. It was small, not more than a quarter of a carat in weight, and unmounted. I put it in my pocket and began ...

It was a diamond all right, shining in the grass half a dozen feet from the blue brick walk. It was small, not more than a quarter of a carat in weight, and unmounted. I put it in my pocket and began ...

I put in a couple of hours canvassing the neighborhood, trying to place the man Mrs. and Miss Leggett had seen. I didn’t have any luck with that one, but I picked up news of another. A Mrs. Priestly⁠—...

At the Nob Hill address Halstead had given me, I told my name to the boy at the switchboard and asked him to pass it on to Fitzstephan. I remembered Fitzstephan as a long, lean, sorrel-haired man of t...

When I arrived at the agency at nine the next morning, Eric Collinson was sitting in the reception room. His sunburned face was dingy without pinkness, and he had forgotten to put stickum on his hair....

The next day brought happenings. Early in the morning there was a telegram from our New York office. Decoded, it read: Louis Upton former proprietor detective agency here stop arrested September first...

After some delay⁠—I had to ring twice⁠—the Leggetts’ door was opened by Owen Fitzstephan. There was no sleepiness in his eyes: they were hot and bright, as they were when he found life interesting. Kn...

Nobody said anything for some minutes after I had finished reading. Mrs. Leggett had taken her handkerchief from her face to listen, sobbing softly now and then. Gabrielle Leggett was looking jerkily ...

Fitzstephan and I ate one of Mrs. Schindler’s good dinners that evening in her low-ceilinged basement, and drank her husband’s good beer. The novelist in Fitzstephan was busy trying to find what he ca...

Madison Andrews was a tall gaunt man of sixty with ragged white hair, eyebrows, and mustache that exaggerated the ruddiness of his bony hard-muscled face. He wore his clothes loose, chewed tobacco, an...

Madison Andrews was a tall gaunt man of sixty with ragged white hair, eyebrows, and mustache that exaggerated the ruddiness of his bony hard-muscled face. He wore his clothes loose, chewed tobacco, an...

I opened my eyes drowsily, decided that I had dozed off for only a moment, closed my eyes, drifted back into slumber, and then roused myself sluggishly again. Something wasn’t right. I forced my eyes ...

I went back to the lobby, to a recess where I had seen a telephone. The phone was there, but dead. I put it down and set out for Minnie Hershey’s room on the sixth floor. I hadn’t been able to do much...

Owen Fitzstephan and I ate another of Mrs. Schindler’s good dinners that evening, though my eating was a matter of catching bites between words. His curiosity poked at me with questions, requests to h...

Eric Collinson wired me from Quesada: Come immediately stop need you stop trouble danger stop meet me at Sunset Hotel stop do not communicate stop Gabrielle must not know stop hurry Eric Carter The te...

Eric Collinson wired me from Quesada: Come immediately stop need you stop trouble danger stop meet me at Sunset Hotel stop do not communicate stop Gabrielle must not know stop hurry Eric Carter The te...

We climbed to the path again and went on to the Collinsons’ house. I showed Rolly the stained towels, handkerchief, dress, and slippers; the paper that had held morphine; the gun on Collinson’s floor,...

Sheriff Feeney, fat, florid, and with a lot of brown mustache, and district attorney Vernon, sharp-featured, aggressive, and hungry for fame, came over from the county seat. They listened to our stori...

I caught the 5:25 train south. It put me in Poston, a dusty town twice Quesada’s size, at 7:30; and a rattle-trap stage, in which I was the only passenger, got me to my destination half an hour later....

The telephone bell brought me out of sleep a little before ten the following morning. Mickey Linehan, talking from San Francisco, told me Cotton had arrived at his mother’s house at between seven and ...

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “It’s dizzy. When we grab our man⁠—or woman⁠—we’re going to find it’s a goof, and Napa will get it instead of the gallows.” “That,” Owen Fitzstephan said, “is characte...

Rolly and I went back to my room, closing the connecting door. He said: “Tch, tch, tch. I’d of thought Mrs. Herman was the last person in the world to⁠—” “You ought to’ve,” I grumbled. “You recommende...

I got Fitzstephan’s car from the garage and drove Gabrielle and Mrs. Herman down to the house in the cove late the following morning. The girl was in low spirits. She made a poor job of smiling when s...

Mary Nunez arrived at half-past seven the next morning. Mickey Linehan drove Mrs. Herman to Quesada, leaving her there, returning with MacMan and a load of groceries. MacMan was a square-built, stiff-...

Mickey Linehan opened the front door for me. He looked at my scratched face and laughed: “You do have one hell of a time with your women. Why don’t you ask them instead of trying to take it away from ...

Owen Fitzstephan never spoke to me again. He refused to see me, and when, as a prisoner, he couldn’t help himself there, he shut his mouth and kept it shut. This sudden hatred of me⁠—for it amounted t...